The ownership of property also was originally communistic, and the idea of individual possession has been a gradual development. The idea of the ownership of land, especially when developed by agricultural peoples, is of a communistic nature; and, from common possession, family and individual ownership gradually comes into being. It is brought about in various ways, chiefly through the division of land among separate families: at first only temporary, held only until the time for a succeeding division arrives; later, owned in perpetuity. Nor was it a rare method of procedure to grant land to any one who desired to cultivate it—an estate that should be his so long as he remained upon it and cultivated the soil, but which reverted to the community, on his leaving it. There gradually developed a constant relationship between land and cultivator as agriculture became more extended and lasting improvements were effected on the soil. Land became the permanent property of the individual; it also became an article of commerce.
Ownership of movable property even was at first of communistic character. Clothing and weapons, enchantments effectual for the individual alone, such as medicine-bags or amulets, were, to be sure, assigned to individuals in very early times; but all property obtained by labour, the products of the chase or of fishing, originally belonged to the community, until in later days each family was allowed to claim the fruits of its own toil, and was only pledged to share with the others under certain conditions. Finally, individuals were permitted to retain or to barter property which they had produced by labour; and exchange, especially exchange between individuals, attained special significance through the division of labour.
The individualisation of the ownership of movable property was especially furthered by members of families performing other labour, outside the family, in addition to their work within the family circle. Although the fruit of all labour accomplished within the family was shared by the members in common, the results of work done outside became the property of the particular individual who had performed the labour. Consequent expansion of the conception of labour led men to one of the greatest triumphs of justice, to the idea of establishing individual rights in ideas and in combinations of ideas, to the recognition of intellectual or immaterial property—right of author or inventor—one of the chief incentives to modern civilisation.
THE CHURCH AND MARRIAGE: A WEDDING SCENE
In very early times marriage had assumed a religious significance and came to be regarded among the sacred as opposed to the secular functions of life.
On the other hand, individual rights in transactions led to conceptions concerning obligations and debts. Exchange, either direct or on terms of credit, brought with it duties and liabilities for which originally the persons and lives of the individuals concerned were held in pledge, until custody of the body—which also included possession of the corpse of a debtor—was succeeded by public imprisonment for debt, and finally by the mere pledging of property, imprisonment for debt having been abolished—a course of development through which the most varied of races have passed.
Rights of Property
The relation of the individual to his possessions led men at first to place movable property in graves, in order that it might be of service to the departed owner during the life beyond; hence the universal custom of burning on funeral pyres, not only weapons and utensils, but animals, slaves, and even wives. In later times men were satisfied with symbolic immolations, or possessions were released from the ban of death and put into further use. The property of the deceased reverted to his family, and thus the right of inheritance arose. There was no right of inheritance during the days of communism; on the death of a member of the family a mere general consolidation of property resulted; with individual property arose the reversion of possessions to the family from which they had been temporarily separated. Thus property either reverted to the family taken as a whole, or to single heirs, certain members of the family; hence a great variety of procedure arose. Up to the present day inheritance by all the children, or inheritance by one alone, exists in Eastern Asia as in Western nations.
In like manner criminal responsibility was originally collective; the family or clan was held responsible for the actions of all its individual members except those who were renounced and made outcasts. Such methods of collective surety still exist among many exceedingly developed peoples; but the system is gradually dying away, the tendency being for the entire responsibility to rest upon the individual alone.